Boring, complex and important: a recipe for the web's dire future

You could help find the next generation of antibiotics

A new biology kit could allow anyone to get involved with the discovery of the next generation of antibiotics. Post/Biotics, created by entrepreneur Vidhi Mehta, will use a combination of citizen science and crowdsourcing to discover new materials with antibiotic properties in a bid to crack the growing issue of drug resistance.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mehta, who has a degree in industrial design, describes the system as a "pop-up lab and testing kit", which can be used to test locally available plants, vegetables, fruits, fungi, mushrooms and soil for their antibiotic potential.

Most antibiotics today have been developed from natural extracts such as soil, plants and insects, but Mehta is keen to encourage others to look a little closer to home when it comes to the new breed of antibiotics. "What if the world's next antibiotic was in our own backyard?" she tells WIRED.

READ NEXT

Ebola is back: WHO confirms outbreak in DR Congo following three deaths

ByMatt Burgess

In December of last year, it was reported that the near-future global toll of antibiotic resistance could lead to ten million deaths per year, more than the death-toll from cancer (8.2m per year) and diabetes (1.5m per year) combined.

Post/Biotics

At the time, The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance stated that antibiotic resistance accounted for an estimated 50,000 deaths in the US and Europe alone. The project estimates the current death toll is 700,000 worldwide. In June of this year the £10m Longitude Prize sought a solution to the spiralling danger of antibiotic resistance.

ADVERTISEMENT

READ NEXT

How effective are mental health apps?

ByEmily Reynolds

Mehta decided to take matters into her own hands. "In design, I was taught problems like drug resistance are wicked problems: a problem of systemic magnitude with multiple stakeholders and no silver bullet," she explains. "Such problems require many different types of interventions, each driving the cause in positive direction." "Growing up in India, home remedies such as ayurveda [have] been a practice quite common to me. Garlic, honey and turmeric are often used as antimicrobials," she continues. "I wondered how many more local medicines and practices people across the world use and what this knowledge mean to scientific researchers looking for a lead in discovering new antibiotics.

Post/Biotics

"This is when I interacted with Josiah Zayner -- a bio-physicist working [at the] International Laboratory for Identification of Antibiotic Drugs. We spoke about crowdsourcing antimicrobials by providing people with tools and platform to assist."

ADVERTISEMENT

READ NEXT

Can the NHS modernise without going broke?

ByNicole Kobie

As well as helping to find crucial new drugs, Post/Biotics could also be used to boost science skills in schools, Metha claims.

Partnering with Imperial College and University of Chicago, the Post/Biotics web database will help people enter data and test and verify samples. "When people participating in Post/Biotics discover an interesting sample the platform recognises its uniqueness and sends it over for verification to university leaders," Mehta explains.

ADVERTISEMENT

Post/Biotics

Mehta is currently working on the development of the Post/Biotics app and claims the kit could be the start of an open-sourced platform for antibiotic discovery. "That platform is a vision of open-source drug discovery, and imagines what can happen when its design enables the tools of scientific innovation to reach out to the common people, supporting their learning, and adding to scientific knowledge through the power of the crowd," she says.

Two versions of Post/Biotics are likely to be produced, one for schools and one for everyone else. Metha says there has been a lot of early interest from retired professionals, people studying medicine and those suffering from chronic diseases.

Post/Biotics is currently in its alpha testing phase, you can participate by signing up online.<span class="edited" data-toggle="tooltip" data-original-title="Today at 16:04:31">